Clayton Brooks, PhD

BA, Roanoke College; MA, PhD, University of Virginia

Mary Baldwin Assistant Professor of History Clayton McClure Brooks recently published her second book The Uplift Generation: Cooperation across the Color Line in Early Twentieth-Century Virginia, offering new insight into the formative years of Jim Crow and how segregation was established in Virginia.

The author’s writing explores the concept that segregation was not formed in the state by white political power structures alone, but rather through cooperation from a generation of Virginia reformers across the color line from 1900 to 1930.

The journey to completion for The Uplift Generation started with Brooks’ dissertation at the University of Virginia and became a story that Brooks felt compelled to carry further.